JOE BIDEN’S Record on Campus Due Process Has Been Abysmal. Is It a Preview of His Presidency?
The rationale for the 2020 candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden, is that he is the great moderate hope. But the key domestic initiative of his vice presidency was not middle-of-the-road at all. It was a declaration that the federal government must engage in a far-reaching, top-down intervention in the sexual interactions between young adults, setting new rules aimed at how students must behave and establishing harsh punishments for those who deviate.
Biden’s approach to campus sexual assault is part of a pattern: He identifies an actual problem, engages in inflammatory—and sometimes false—rhetoric about it, then fashions a harsh, overreaching response that sweeps up the harmless and even the innocent. But he continues to tout his work on campus sexual assault. He boasted about it at the second presidential debate. How did Biden come to advocate such extreme policies on this topic? And if he were elected, what would it mean for how he would govern?
…In September 2017, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced her intention to reform federal Title IX policy. She said what had been created was a “failed system” that brought justice neither to the accuser nor the accused. In a phone call to activists shortly after the DeVos announcement, Biden angrily dismissed the notions that the accused have been treated unfairly and that male students have been “vilified.” He called critics of his policies “cultural Neanderthals.” He urged the activists to organize to prevent their college presidents from making any Title IX reforms. Picking up the language of the activists themselves, he recommended shaming and embarrassing the school leaders. Biden said, “Please, please remember: Shame, shame, shame is a powerful weapon in our fight.”…Biden has yet to acknowledge that his work on campus sexual assault is another well-intentioned effort that went badly awry. Instead of making women safer, it spread panic and damaged the educations and opportunities of many young men who didn’t deserve it.
reason-Emily Yoffe
